Just like she deserved.
And that wasn’t me. No matter how hard I tried.
At the end of the day, us splitting up meant we could both move on. Her with Ryan and me with...
Well.
I grabbed Ryan’s shoulder and squeezed it. “She was meant to be with you. I loved her but not in the way she deserved. You make her happy. That’s all I care about.”
His mouth opened as he clearly meant to say something, only to slowly close once more.
“Listen. As long as you’re good to her and Eva, we have no animosity between us,” I said.
He gave me a slow nod, exhaling through his nose. “All right.”
Letting him go, I gestured down the hallway. “They’re in room 405.”
“You’re not coming?”
I shook my head, catching the doors to the elevator before they closed again. “I think you’ve got it from here. Let Carrie know I had something that came up. Have her text me when she can once Eva wakes up.”
“I will. And... thank you, Avery.”
Slipping back into the elevator, I gave Ryan a quick nod before punching the door close button a few times. I felt a little bad for ditching so suddenly, but honestly, now was not the time to be intruding on a family moment like that.
There was no doubt in my mind that Carrie would be grateful for me being there for her, but at the end of the day, she’d wanted her soon-to-be-husband by her side, not her ex. I was fine with that—more than fine, actually, since it meant I got to go home to see Brandon again.
We needed to talk. We needed to sort out where we were going and what we wanted going forward. If this was just a sexual thing, fine, I could handle that. He didn’t seem to mind me fumbling through things like an inexperienced virgin.
If it wasmorethan that?
My stomach tightened with butterflies.
We needed to figure it out.Ineeded to figure it out like he’d asked me to in the car.
I owed him that much.
CHAPTER 23
Brandon
“You look really nice,”Max commented when I slid into the passenger seat of his sedan.
I had half a mind to flip down the visor and check myself one last time for any stray signs of what I’d been doing ten minutes earlier, but stopped myself at the last moment, and instead, grabbed a hold of my seatbelt and wrenched it across my chest.
I felt bad about going into this date already eager to get it over with.
Max was a nice guy and had a great personality. Charismatic, smart, was easy on the eyes and had a subtle way of flirting that wasn’t overly sexual like a lot of past hookups I’d had. He was the kind of man that I wouldn’t mind bringing back to meet my family and would probably charm the pants off of all of them once we sat down together for family dinner.
I knew if given the chance, they’d end up loving him.
Why wouldn’t they when he was everything that a man like me would want?
If I wasn’t wound up from hooking up with Avery in the car and felt like it was a do-or-die situation to force myself to move on from it, maybe I would’ve given it another day before I contacted Max and saved us both this headache in getting him to take me out right before I’d gotten that call from Avery.
I’d been too impatient, too ready to move on and bury my feelings for Avery and the chokehold that our sexual chemistry had on me. Instead of waiting another day, I’d jumped the gun, and now I was paying the price.
Or rather,Maxwas paying the price for my fuck up. Getting his hopes up under a false promise that I had no intention of following through with. Not when Avery had made it damn clear that he wasn’t backing down from exploring himself with me.
